The Kingdom of Prep: The Inside Story of the Rise and (Near) Fall of J. Crew, by Maggie Bullock
I’ve been a casual J. Crew shopper since my college years (that ‘90s barn jacket!), but I didn’t know much about the story behind the company before picking up this book. Bullock, a former editor at Elle and Vogue, starts by chronicling the origins of preppy style in Brooks Brothers’ pioneering ready-to-wear men’s clothing and in campus fashion. That’s the heritage that Arthur Cinader, who was running his family’s unglamorous direct-sales business, and his daughter, Emily Scott, sold back to the American consumer when they created J. Crew. Under Emily’s guidance, the J. Crew catalog became more like a glimpse into a lifestyle than a hard sales pitch. “The clothes are essential,” writes Bullock, “but no more so than, say, the dog lazing at your feet, the vintage convertible overlooking the dunes, the smiling boyfriend with the floppy ‘Dead Poets Society’ haircut.” After a private equity deal and the departure of both Arthur and Emily, the company was steered in a more fashion-oriented direction by retail “merchant prince” Mickey Drexler and the president/creative director/style icon Jenna Lyons (who is improbably now a Real Housewife). Big personalities plus the ups and downs of the retail cycle make this a great summer business beach read.
Everybody Knows, by Jordan Harper
Mae Pruitt is a Los Angeles publicist who doesn’t go anywhere without a stack of NDAs and who is extremely skilled at making bad stuff go away for her clients. She’s a cog in the larger machine that she calls “the Beast,” made up of “lawyers and black-bag publicists and security services and investigators — eyes and ears and arms and fists.” Dan, her boss, summons her to an away-from-the-office meeting to invite her in on a freelance gig, the details of which are murky but point to unsavory, if not criminal, activity. Before she can give him an answer, he’s spectacularly gunned down in what the police call a carjacking gone bad. Mae knows how these stories are crafted and doubts the party line. She teams up with her ex, Chris, a former sheriff’s deputy and now an investigator for a local attorney, to figure out what actually happened. Their digging leads them into the true power center of L.A., made up of the people who decide away from the public eye what happens and who will profit from it. A very well-written, gritty thriller, with spot-on descriptions of L.A. institutions and celebrity culture.
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, by David Grann
This is my first David Grann book, and it made me immediately want to read his previous works of nonfiction. It also made me extremely glad I wasn’t a seafarer in the 18th century. The Wager was one of six British ships that set out, in 1740, to cross the Atlantic and sail around Cape Horn in pursuit of a treasure-laden Spanish galleon. Crew members are beset by typhus (spread, disgustingly, via lice poop), scurvy, lack of food, and terrible ocean conditions, and that’s before their ship starts to fall apart. When the Wager eventually wrecks off the coast of Patagonia, the survivors don’t agree about the best path forward. Conflict ensues (to say the least), and in the end, two groups of castaways wash up in different places, six months apart, with different versions of what really happened. Back in England, the narratives compete via published first-person accounts, and the potential consequences are high, since the survivors face court-martial. Enjoy this one in book form before you see the eventual movie from Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio.